biography

Born in 1973, Tibor Simon-Mazula completed his BA in Drawing, Visual Art and Mathematics at the University of Szeged, Hungary before going on to study filmmaking and cinematography in Budapest. In 2010 Tibor went on to San Francisco to earn his MFA in Painting and in the fall of 2013 he was named ‘Emerging Artist’ at the Academy of Art University with the reward of a distinguished two-month solo exhibition in downtown San Francisco.

In the last few years the artist has participated in several notable exhibitions across the USA. In 2015 as ’The Emerging Artist of the Bay Area’, he exhibited nine paintings at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art in Novato, California. His work was displayed in White Walls and Shooting Gallery, San Francisco together with fellow contemporary artists: M C Escher, Don Ed Hardy and Adam Lister. He was also a winner of the 2015 Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series Competition and was featured at SCOPE Miami Beach. Most recently his art was on display at DAX Gallery next to the works of Keith Haring, Ben Eine, D*Face and Plastic Jesus.

In his work, Tibor draws upon his background in mathematics, filmmaking, and cinematography to create crepuscular scenes, often containing solitary figures within the structure of a room. This nascent moment, also referred to as a "physical nadir" by the artist, can be seen as parallel to Francis Bacon’s daunting ‘space cage’ compositions. As recently suggested by the artist, "my work describes a special intimate moment, when the figure is alone and able to emerge...”. In Simon-Mazula’s paintings these metaphoric events of advent, are like the dawning of consciousness, when something becomes evident to the mind with the subsequent bodily response.

“Simon-Mazula works intuitively, taking refuge in the physical and tactile aspects of painting.”American Art Collector, 2013

statement

During the painting process I trust in my actual instincts. Working intuitively is a refuge, which not only shields from the external world but creates connection. I calm down, when the brush caresses the canvas, but when the paint splashes, the palette knife scratches, I break through the grip of the world with the lively expressive action of painting. On the canvas, sometimes thick oil paint is mixed with bone ash or marble dust curls so that is cracks like the dry earth, but some areas are left empty as if a storm had swept through the image.